The present disclosure relates to an optical scanning device for scanning a laser beam, an image forming apparatus including the optical scanning device, and an aperture fixing method.
An electrophotographic image forming apparatus includes an optical scanning device that forms an electrostatic latent image on a photoconductor by scanning a laser beam over the surface of the photoconductor. The optical scanning device includes a light source and a polygon mirror, wherein the light source emits a laser beam, and the polygon mirror scans the laser beam emitted from the light source. In addition, there is known a configuration where one polygon mirror is used to scan laser beams irradiated from a plurality of light sources. Specifically, the plurality of light sources are disposed at different positions along a sub scanning direction that is perpendicular to an optical axis direction of the laser beams and a main scanning direction in which the laser beams are scanned. In this configuration, laser beams from the light sources are incident on the polygon mirror at different angles, and are reflected and guided thereby to corresponding photoconductor drums.